I filmed between tasks, between shelling, between trying to get some sleep

There are moments that overwhelm and shock us so deeply that they become turning points in our lives. For Helena Maksyom, who at the time was just a volunteer helping evacuate civilians from the devastated Donetsk region, that moment came when she arrived at the railway station in Kramatorsk shortly after a Russian missile strike killed 51 people waiting to be evacuated. From that day on, she dedicated all her personal and professional abilities to the defence of Ukraine. Before the war, she had all kinds of plans: taking better care of her mother, learning French, learning to play the piano, maybe even starting a family. By the time filming ended, over 1,000 days later, the only thing on her mind was surviving the next day.

You joined the National Guard of Ukraine simply because you felt you had to, and you were the only woman in your unit. At the beginning of the film, you describe yourself as "fat and ugly." Wearing an oversized uniform, you almost seem lost, stripped of your femininity. What is it like to be a woman, alone, in the overwhelmingly male world of war, having to learn entirely new survival skills almost overnight?

At the beginning of the film I don't actually say, "I'm fat and ugly." I say: "I look fat and sad. And I'm improving the focus, but I think the white balance is not right." Maybe I was trying to fix the white balance because, long before the full-scale invasion, I already felt that everything around us was gradually turning black. I felt that something very cruel and unjust was coming. Still, like millions of other Ukrainians, I kept trying to make plans. When the first rockets landed nearby on 24 February, I was scared. But I wasn't surprised. Then came the evacuations. We heard stories from civilians about torture, rape and killings. We saw destroyed towns.

And then Kramatorsk. After seeing the railway station and what was left of people, including children waiting for an evacuation train, I couldn't make a different choice. I joined the National Guard. The beginning was hard. We were sent straight to one of the toughest sectors of the frontline. I had to learn a completely new language. The sounds of artillery, mortars, tanks, helicopters, aerial bombs. I counted the seconds. I estimated the distance.

Then I got used to everything else: no shower, little food or water, no sleep, dirt, blood, the cries of the wounded, dead bodies. And all this while being the only woman in a battalion of men who were just as scared as I was.

The first month was a test. Some wanted to see if I could keep up. But very quickly it stopped mattering. We were in the same dirty boat. Equally tired. Equally scared. Wanting exactly the same thing – to survive.

People often ask what it was like to be the only woman. After a while I almost forgot about it. The guys accepted me. They shared food, made sure I got some sleep whenever possible. I looked after them too. At some point they even started joking that "Helena has eggs". I took it as a compliment. I did lose my femininity. But back then I didn't miss it. I learned how to live in that world. After my first rotation I had three days of leave and went to see my friends. They didn't recognise me. Later they told me, "We thought we had lost you forever, Helena".

It feels as though, at first, you filmed everything you saw, almost as if you were filming for yourself. While your fellow soldiers spent their nights calling their wives, children and parents, you occasionally spoke to your mother, but more often you spoke to the camera. Did filming initially become a conversation with yourself – a kind of meditative monologue that replaced ordinary social interaction?

When I joined the army, I had much more important things to learn than filming. Once we reached the frontline, there was very little time for it anyway. I filmed whenever I could – between tasks, between shelling, between trying to get some sleep. At that point I wasn't making a film. I wasn't thinking about structure or storytelling. I was simply recording our life. It became our diary. A diary of teachers, bakers, construction workers, boys who had just finished school and still didn't know what they wanted to become, boys who hadn't even had their first sex yet, men who spent every free minute worrying about their wives and children. And me, trying to call my mother whenever the connection allowed it.

So no, the camera didn't replace human conversations. It became another way of telling what was almost impossible to explain. After we lost our first guys, I started filming myself a little more. I kept thinking: if something happened to me, maybe my comrades would bring this camera back. They knew my friend and producer, Adrian, and I hoped he would put the footage together so it could become my last conversation with the people I loved. Talking to my mother was difficult because I was hiding almost everything from her. It was the same with friends. I filtered almost everything. After a while you realise that people don't know what to ask, and you don't know where to begin.

I occasionally spoke to Adrian. Later he tried to convince me to leave the army and finish the film. I remember feeling annoyed that he couldn't understand why I simply couldn't leave my unit. I think many soldiers experience this distance from the rest of the world. Not because we don't want to talk. Because sometimes we simply don't know how. I wanted us to be understood.

As time went on and you witnessed more of the horrors of war, your focus seemed to shift away from yourself and towards the people around you. Wounds, amputations, deaths, and disappearances gradually widened your perspective, and your fellow soldiers became the emotional centre of the story. At what point did you realise you were making a tribute to those who never came back, like Artem? Was that a conscious decision, or did the circumstances naturally lead you there?

I don't think my focus ever shifted. My guys were always the emotional centre of the story. I was simply one of them. I never stood outside the story with a camera. I was living exactly the same life they were. The camera just happened to be in my hands from time to time. As the months went by, I lost more and more people who were very close to me. I started filming as many bright moments with them as I could while they were still alive. Their jokes. Their smiles. Ordinary conversations. The moments you never think to remember until they are all you have left. So yes, it became a conscious decision. But the circumstances naturally led me there.

The first loss that really broke me was Artem. My last bright memory of him is us driving out of Bakhmut in the T4 van. He was telling me he wanted to propose to his girlfriend, and I promised to help him find the right engagement ring. Then there was Ruslan. At the beginning of the film he's the one saying we can't keep our hands in our pockets anymore because we're in the army now. Later, after I suffered a concussion, he came to visit me in the hospital. We drank coffee together. He told me he was going for combat medic training because we simply couldn't keep losing so many people. Later, he was killed. I remember my very young reconnaissance guys nervously laughing before climbing onto their armoured vehicles during the counteroffensive. None of them came back.

People often ask me what I remember from the fighting. I don't remember most of the assaults. I remember voices. I remember faces. I remember Sergey leaving behind a half-full plastic cup of apple juice. I still can't drink apple juice without feeling sick. Many of those moments never made it into the film. I sent them to parents, wives, girlfriends... For many, those recordings became the last time they saw their loved one smiling, laughing or simply being themselves. I was lucky enough to come back. Many of them didn't. Whenever I feel I'm running out of strength, I remind myself that I came back. They didn't. So I have to keep speaking about them.

Although it's clear you tried to protect the identities of the dead by hiding their faces, some of the scenes are still incredibly difficult to watch – even for those of us who lived through the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. One line stayed with us: "At first we were terrified, and then we stopped caring". Can human beings really become so accustomed to horror that they grow numb to it?

No. I don't think you become numb. Every day on the frontline teaches you the same thing: no matter how hard today is, tomorrow may be much worse. You may see things you never thought a human being could see. You may have to do things you never imagined you would have to do. You don't have the luxury of stopping to grieve. The moment you pause, the enemy doesn't. They keep attacking. More people get wounded. More people get killed. There is always another task. The loss of a friend today hurts me exactly the same way it did the first time. I just gather myself faster because I have to.

Not long ago, my good friend Vladyslav Pysmennyi was killed. He was just a kid when we met during the counteroffensive in the Zaporizhzhia region. He dreamed of opening a car repair shop after the war. He always said, "Everything will be Ukraine." This summer he was supposed to marry Tanya. Instead, I stood at his funeral. I visit my guys whenever I can. We are constantly in touch. Maybe I'll return to the army on a permanent basis. But first I want to move my next film, Inhumanely Human Things, forward. At the very least, I want to finish a strong treatment and a teaser so I can find the resources to make it. It asks different questions than Don't Ask Me If I Killed. I believe they are questions we cannot afford to avoid.

One of the most striking aspects of the film is its editing. The balance between handheld footage, static shots, mirror reflections and intimate close-ups of your fellow soldiers is remarkable. Could you tell us more about the editing process? How long did it take, and who deserves the most credit for shaping such a dynamic film that keeps the audience engaged throughout?

By the way, almost all the footage is handheld. Something very good finally happened to me when I met my editor, Svitlana Zaloga. The first day we didn't edit anything. We just talked and drank coffee – she makes excellent coffee. The second day, I would begin a sentence and she would finish it. She understood what I was trying to say before I had found the words myself. In Svitlana I found someone I could trust with the most intimate and painful moments I had filmed – and with those I couldn't film but carried with me ever since. She understood that those unseen moments were part of the film too. The editing happened in stages. Between sessions I returned to the frontline to continue serving. Before I met Svitlana, coming back to the city never felt right. After we started working together, I found myself impatiently waiting for permission from my commanders to go to Kyiv for another editing session. The war decided our editing schedule. Every time I sat down with Svitlana, I remembered that I was also a filmmaker, not only a soldier. We made this film together. It wouldn't be the same without her. Today Svitlana is one of my closest friends. Maybe we'll edit Inhumanely Human Things together as well. We'll see. Time will tell.

Your film also captures moments of humour and joy amid the chaos of war. How important are those moments in preserving your mental health when every single day could be your last?

It would be almost impossible to keep going without small moments of joy. One of the strangest things about war is that sometimes, just a few minutes after something terrible has happened – after you've lost your people – someone makes a completely stupid, very black joke. At first, you blame yourself for laughing. Then you stop. It's how you survive. Sometimes one terrible thing follows another. So you make a stupid joke. You smoke. You take a breath. Then you keep working. Humour doesn't make the tragedy smaller. It simply helps you carry it. Sometimes it's five minutes without shelling. Sometimes it's hearing your friend's voice on the radio. Sometimes it's sharing a piece of chocolate – but not too much, because chocolate makes you thirsty, and water isn't always there. And sometimes it's a stupid joke that reminds you you're still alive.